Forefront Antimalware Updates

Service packs for Forefront and Antigen application server protection products have been released. Among other changes in the service packs is a reduction in the number of antimalware scanning engines that are supported from nine to five, but Microsoft says that the reduced engine set will continue to provide equal or better detection rates and response times than the industry’s other leading solutions. Microsoft will stop providing updates and support for the retiring engines on Dec. 1, 2009. New names for Forefront products planned for the “Stirling” suite have also been announced, with unchanged pricing.

Service Packs Released

A line of Forefront Security products (originally named Antigen) protect Microsoft server applications from viruses, spam, and inappropriate or dangerous content. They can harness up to five scan engines, chosen from engines from Microsoft and third parties.

New service packs are available for two Forefront products: SP2 for Forefront Security for Exchange Server and SP3 for Forefront Security for SharePoint. Antigen products, which are still available to Forefront server security customers to protect older Microsoft product versions, also got updates: SP2 for Antigen for Exchange with Antigen Spam Manager 9.0 and SP2 for Antigen for SMTP Gateways with Antigen Spam Manager 9.0. The updates were released on July 1, 2009.